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Committees Considering Hearings on WMD Intelligence

Aired June 03, 2003 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to begin this morning in Washington, where law makers from both parties are demanding answers in the failed hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Two committees are considering hearings to scrutinize what the administration said, what it knew, and, maybe most importantly, what it believed.
CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre has more now on questions of credibility.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Colin Powell says his presentation to the United Nations February 5 followed three straight days of preparation, during which he grilled CIA analysts late into the night about the quality of U.S. intelligence. In Rome, Powell says he still stands by that report.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination.

MCINTYRE: But an administration official tells CNN Powell did have doubts about evidence linking Iraq to al Qaeda and included the reference only after being persuaded by the White House. The failure of the U.S. to find any banned weapons so far has some in Congress calling for hearings into whether the case against Iraq was overstated or even intentionally inflated.

SEN. EVAN BAYH (D-IN), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: After all of the facts are in, it looks as if the intelligence was simply wrong. I think we need to do two things. First, get to the bottom of why errors in judgment were made. And secondly, I think there will be a heightened level of skepticism.

MCINTYRE: A CNN "USA Today" Gallup poll shows for now two thirds of Americans seem willing to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt. Asked whether the Bush administration deliberately misled the American public about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, 31 percent said yes, it deliberately misled, but 67 percent said no, it did not.

Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, is facing a more skeptical public and criticism from within his own party.

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: And the idea that Saddam Hussein has for 12 years been obstructing the U.N. weapons inspectors, has been engaged in this huge battle with the international community when all the way along he'd actually destroyed these weapons is completely absurd.

MCINTYRE: So, where are the weapons? It's clear intelligence indicating they were deployed on the battlefield was wrong. Some administration officials are saying instead that in an effort to ride out U.N. inspections, Saddam Hussein might have destroyed any large stockpiles and hidden production capability inside dual use commercial facilities.

(on camera): New U.S. search teams heading to Iraq this week will focus on finding people and documents to lead them to the banned weapons. But they say just because they haven't found weapons of mass destruction so far doesn't mean they're not there. After all, some might argue, they haven't found Saddam Hussein either, and no one is suggesting that he wasn't really there before the war.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: All of these questions are underlined by a new report that is out, this report being posted by the U.N.'s outgoing chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix. Blix says that there is no evidence that has been found to support White House claims.

Let's go now to the Iraqi capital, where our Baghdad bureau chief Jane Arraf is standing by for more on this -- Jane.

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, Leon, even though there is no evidence that's really surfaced yet, U.S. officials here are insisting that they'll have a much better shot with the arrival of General Keith Dayton and that team of perhaps 1,200 members. Now, the chief U.S. administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, says that what they'll do is provide a more analytical approach.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

L. PAUL BREMER, U.S./IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATOR: It is, in my view, a very important priority of the coalition. I think we will find something at some point. It seems very hard to believe that Saddam Hussein would have put his people through the misery he put them through for 12 years, given up billions and billions of dollars of revenue, if he didn't have something to hide.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ARRAF: Now, this is obviously going to be a much different climate and a much different set of inspections as it were, than there were previously. That decade and more when there were stand-offs, obstructions, all sorts of things that prevented U.N. weapons inspectors from doing their jobs, they say.

Now, these people are mostly intelligence analysts and other experts and they'll be doing a lot of analysis of the intelligence as they're compiling it, coordinating it, and trying to get new intelligence. Now, in the past, some of that intelligence has been thought to be faulty, but officials say they stand a much better chance with this more coordinated approach -- Leon.

HARRIS: All right, Jane, on another topic then, what are you hearing and seeing in these latest hours there about these conflicts and that rancor that's been generated by Mr. Bremer's selection of another panel of Iraqi leaders? We've been hearing that Iraqi forces there, the Iraqi people, rather, have been saying they want to choose their own leaders, their own interim government, if you will, and that has not been the case, the least in recent weeks here. What are seeing on that front today?

ARRAF: Well, people here still are really very suspicious about the U.S. motives over this. But U.S. officials say that they're doing it for very practical reasons, that if they were to hold this national conference that had been envisioned and people feel promised to them, it would essentially take forever to get a government up and running. And they're making the trade-off, they say, at getting those ministries running even if they're going to be led by the U.S.

Now, that presents a danger. It presents, rather, a danger in itself. People here are already chafing a little bit at what they see as a U.S. occupation and certainly having a U.S.-led government for the foreseeable future isn't making a lot of people very happy.

But, really, Leon, at the end of the day, if it works, it will work, and if they get the ministries up and running and get jobs, get electricity, get water, people will probably be able to forgive them a little bit for not having as quickly a role in this democracy that's developing as they would like -- Leon.

HARRIS: Interesting. It's just that no one expected that two months after the end of the fighting there you'd still be using the words if when you talk about those sort of installations.

We'll see how that turns out.

Thanks, Jane.

Jane Arraf in Baghdad.

All right, folks, join us next hour. Senator John McCain is going to wade into this debate over the intelligence community's handling of the weapons search and the information that led up to it. That's coming up next hour right here on CNN.

And for a closer look at the search for weapons of mass destruction, you can visit our Web site in the meantime and find a previous of the classified CIA report, the British stance on the topic, the deployment of more inspection teams, as well as a link to a "Time" magazine article on the topic now. That address, of course, cnn.com. The AOL keyword is CNN.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





Aired June 3, 2003 - 10:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to begin this morning in Washington, where law makers from both parties are demanding answers in the failed hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Two committees are considering hearings to scrutinize what the administration said, what it knew, and, maybe most importantly, what it believed.
CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre has more now on questions of credibility.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Colin Powell says his presentation to the United Nations February 5 followed three straight days of preparation, during which he grilled CIA analysts late into the night about the quality of U.S. intelligence. In Rome, Powell says he still stands by that report.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination.

MCINTYRE: But an administration official tells CNN Powell did have doubts about evidence linking Iraq to al Qaeda and included the reference only after being persuaded by the White House. The failure of the U.S. to find any banned weapons so far has some in Congress calling for hearings into whether the case against Iraq was overstated or even intentionally inflated.

SEN. EVAN BAYH (D-IN), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: After all of the facts are in, it looks as if the intelligence was simply wrong. I think we need to do two things. First, get to the bottom of why errors in judgment were made. And secondly, I think there will be a heightened level of skepticism.

MCINTYRE: A CNN "USA Today" Gallup poll shows for now two thirds of Americans seem willing to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt. Asked whether the Bush administration deliberately misled the American public about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, 31 percent said yes, it deliberately misled, but 67 percent said no, it did not.

Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, is facing a more skeptical public and criticism from within his own party.

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: And the idea that Saddam Hussein has for 12 years been obstructing the U.N. weapons inspectors, has been engaged in this huge battle with the international community when all the way along he'd actually destroyed these weapons is completely absurd.

MCINTYRE: So, where are the weapons? It's clear intelligence indicating they were deployed on the battlefield was wrong. Some administration officials are saying instead that in an effort to ride out U.N. inspections, Saddam Hussein might have destroyed any large stockpiles and hidden production capability inside dual use commercial facilities.

(on camera): New U.S. search teams heading to Iraq this week will focus on finding people and documents to lead them to the banned weapons. But they say just because they haven't found weapons of mass destruction so far doesn't mean they're not there. After all, some might argue, they haven't found Saddam Hussein either, and no one is suggesting that he wasn't really there before the war.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: All of these questions are underlined by a new report that is out, this report being posted by the U.N.'s outgoing chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix. Blix says that there is no evidence that has been found to support White House claims.

Let's go now to the Iraqi capital, where our Baghdad bureau chief Jane Arraf is standing by for more on this -- Jane.

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, Leon, even though there is no evidence that's really surfaced yet, U.S. officials here are insisting that they'll have a much better shot with the arrival of General Keith Dayton and that team of perhaps 1,200 members. Now, the chief U.S. administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, says that what they'll do is provide a more analytical approach.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

L. PAUL BREMER, U.S./IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATOR: It is, in my view, a very important priority of the coalition. I think we will find something at some point. It seems very hard to believe that Saddam Hussein would have put his people through the misery he put them through for 12 years, given up billions and billions of dollars of revenue, if he didn't have something to hide.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ARRAF: Now, this is obviously going to be a much different climate and a much different set of inspections as it were, than there were previously. That decade and more when there were stand-offs, obstructions, all sorts of things that prevented U.N. weapons inspectors from doing their jobs, they say.

Now, these people are mostly intelligence analysts and other experts and they'll be doing a lot of analysis of the intelligence as they're compiling it, coordinating it, and trying to get new intelligence. Now, in the past, some of that intelligence has been thought to be faulty, but officials say they stand a much better chance with this more coordinated approach -- Leon.

HARRIS: All right, Jane, on another topic then, what are you hearing and seeing in these latest hours there about these conflicts and that rancor that's been generated by Mr. Bremer's selection of another panel of Iraqi leaders? We've been hearing that Iraqi forces there, the Iraqi people, rather, have been saying they want to choose their own leaders, their own interim government, if you will, and that has not been the case, the least in recent weeks here. What are seeing on that front today?

ARRAF: Well, people here still are really very suspicious about the U.S. motives over this. But U.S. officials say that they're doing it for very practical reasons, that if they were to hold this national conference that had been envisioned and people feel promised to them, it would essentially take forever to get a government up and running. And they're making the trade-off, they say, at getting those ministries running even if they're going to be led by the U.S.

Now, that presents a danger. It presents, rather, a danger in itself. People here are already chafing a little bit at what they see as a U.S. occupation and certainly having a U.S.-led government for the foreseeable future isn't making a lot of people very happy.

But, really, Leon, at the end of the day, if it works, it will work, and if they get the ministries up and running and get jobs, get electricity, get water, people will probably be able to forgive them a little bit for not having as quickly a role in this democracy that's developing as they would like -- Leon.

HARRIS: Interesting. It's just that no one expected that two months after the end of the fighting there you'd still be using the words if when you talk about those sort of installations.

We'll see how that turns out.

Thanks, Jane.

Jane Arraf in Baghdad.

All right, folks, join us next hour. Senator John McCain is going to wade into this debate over the intelligence community's handling of the weapons search and the information that led up to it. That's coming up next hour right here on CNN.

And for a closer look at the search for weapons of mass destruction, you can visit our Web site in the meantime and find a previous of the classified CIA report, the British stance on the topic, the deployment of more inspection teams, as well as a link to a "Time" magazine article on the topic now. That address, of course, cnn.com. The AOL keyword is CNN.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com